First published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Jacques Lacan has creatively grafted Zhuangzi’s concept of the subject on the Western tradition of Logo-centrism. Lacan rewrites the triangle positions of the subject as the Real, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, expresses them in the vocabulary of detective stories, and achieves his scholarly reputation. The insufficiency of his theory could be redressed by Zhuangzi’s idea of ‘the poetics of oneness.’ For Zhuangzi, a man can forget his ‘Social I’ and ‘Corporeal I,’ arrive at the phase of ‘the equality of things’ (...) in his symbiotic fusion with the surrounding things. These two thinkers complement each other and enrich our understanding of the subject. (shrink)

In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, ...

ABSTRACTJacques Lacan studied Chinese classics and received much inspiration from Zhuangzi. This paper concentrates on the comparative study of morality in those two thinkers from three connecting levels, namely, nature as the source of ethical codes, reason as the means to arrive at the ethical state, and pleasure as the ultimate purpose of morality. The investigation into the topic is enlightening for posthuman morality. Zhuangzi’s idea of the poetics of oneness inspires the Lacanian concept of the Real and ushers us (...) into a new territory to rethink animal rights. (shrink)